As a tool and die maker, I would absolutely LOVE to see that machine being set up and then cutting a rib!

Right - Good point Allan.





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I know there are others out there that have ORIGINAL Parker rib machines , it would only take a lot of time and effort to find one that a person/company would be willing to dispose of. Good luck !!! If I were younger , I would find one.

Think of this question---Do you think Parker Brothers only had ONE rib machine ???

Gary,
If your ever traveling through the area give me a call and I will take you over there. Last year Dave and I took founding member Fred Stump and his wife to view the Parker grave sites, the Meriden Historical Society, and the old PB factory site. I'm not sure the neighbors have figured out why people would stop on a dead end street to pick up old bricks.:)

A well run manufacturing company wouldn't limit themselves to only one machine that was depended upon to produce 5,000 matted ribs per year, let alone the fact that machines break down and can put production way behind schedule without at least one or two backup machines.


A guy would be pretty hard pressed to even find a single whole brick there anymore. The place has been so well bulldozed and the rubble is just about all crushed and crumbled brick and mortar. I have seen some bricks from the area purported to be from the original Parker Bros. factory but which are much too recently made to be from the Gun Works.





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I know where they are

The bricks or the rib mills?

Sorry for being so curt. I was on my I-phone in the shop. I was referring to available whole bricks from the factory site. There is an area on the lot that still holds a fair amount of whole bricks.

As far as the rib matting machine goes the last I saw of it was at Tony's place. The machine is more of a micro shaper than a mill. I would love to play with it as I have a lot of literature on it and it looks like fun.

The shaper angle is what I always imagined it to be, although I've never actually seen pictures of the machine either static OR in operation. You've actually got literature on this thing?!?! I don't suppose you'd be willing to scan and share copies of that, would you?

Dave submitted an article for publication in Parker Pages on Parker Bros machinery a couple of years ago and the rib-matting machine was featured in it.





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